George Pitcher is an Anglican priest who serves his ministry at St Bride's, Fleet Street, in London – the "journalists' church".

It's a dark day for the assisted-death lobbyists at Dignity in Dying. Lord Falconer, whose attempt to get assisted suicide legalised in the House of Lords failed last year, will be wobbling with rage that Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has turned out not to be the Law Lords' poodle by undermining the Suicide Act 1961, with his assisted-suicide prosecution policy, published today.

From his draft guidelines, published last year, the list of public-interest factors in favour of prosecution has doubled from eight to 16 and there is one fewer factor against prosecution, at six (and a very important omission it is). Doctors and medical staff will be mightily relieved that he has included their professions (including all nurses and healthcare professionals) as more likely to be prosecuted if they assist a death. A new inclusion for prosecution is a "suspect…acting in his or her capacity as a person involved in the management or as an employee…of an organisation or group, the purpose of which is to provide a physical environment…in which to allow another to commit suicide." So (oh happy day!) no sordid Dignitas-style clinics in Britain. Gone is the rather naive draft proposal for mitigation if "the suspect was the spouse, partner or close relative or a close personal friend of the victim" – so bumping off granny when she has become a nuisance is right out.

But by far the most important difference between the draft proposals and the final guidelines of today is the withdrawal of potential non-prosecution if (according to last year's draft) "the victim had a terminal illness or a severe and incurable physical disability or a severe degenerative physical condition from which there was no possibility of recovery."

Not only is this a triumph for the vast majority of terminally ill and disabled people who don't want to kill themselves and who certainly don't, thankyou very much, want to be devalued as second-class lives by the euthanasia lobby. It also slaps down Dignity in Dying's much-vaunted mission statement to provide "assisted death for terminally ill, mentally competent adults". Er, sorry chaps, the DPP has now said that being terminally-ill makes no difference to prospects of prosecution.

They'll be back. Just as soon as there's a prosecution under the DPP's new guidelines – and they make it more, not less, likely that people assisting a suicide will be prosecuted – Dignity in Dying will be chirruping that the law must be changed in favour of euthanasia.

But they must know today – and we should rejoice – that the law can only be changed in parliament, not through the back-door of the DPP's office when their parliamentary efforts have dismally failed.